


Murderbot and the Raksura

by Frostanity



Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2020-12-28 05:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21131378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frostanity/pseuds/Frostanity
Summary: Murderbot x Raksura crossover, aka Raksura in spaaaaace.





	1. Chapter 1

Murderbot and the Raksura  
Part 1

I was having a pleasant evening re-watching my favorite episodes of Sanctuary Moon when I received a message from Doctor Mensah. If it had been anybody else I would have ignored it because I was in between contracts and having a vacation, aka binge-watching media and ignoring reality. But for Mensah I paused the show.

_Murderbot, we could use extra security for a boarding. Are you available to come with me immediately?_

I would have liked to say I was busy, but then they’d have to send somebody else instead and I really didn’t want that. Squishy humans were bad at security and I wouldn’t trust any of them with Mensah. If somebody had to get shot at, or just plain shot, it might as well be me. 

_On my way._

Mensah explained once we were en-route. “Border patrol stopped a suspicious ship and they called for backup to board it. They don’t want to bring the ship anywhere near the station without a full sweep.”

“Are they pirates?” I asked as I put on a set of generic armor, the same kind that local border patrol agents wore but without the little border patrol emblem since I was an independent security consultant. This set had been specially fitted for me to use on my jobs and it was the most comfortable armor I’d ever worn. This may or may not have been due to the fact it was the first time I owned, fully and legally, a set of armor of my own. I could modify it any way I saw fit, although for now I preferred to keep its generic, anonymous look. 

“It’s not clear,” Mensah said. “They claim they’re carrying legal bioengineered products but they have nothing to prove provenance. Legitimate products from legitimate laboratories would be clearly identified.”

“So it’s illegitimate products from an illegitimate laboratory.”

“Maybe. We’re more worried they interfered with an interdicted planet of some kind. We need to inspect the creatures and that means boarding. It could be dangerous.”

Grabbing living samples from alien planets wasn’t illegal, except if the planet in question was suspected of supporting sentient life. Then it got interdicted and studied, same as planets with remnants of older civilizations. The kind of people and corporation who flouted those laws, like Greycris, were liable to get violent. That would be why Mensah wanted me for this operation. I didn’t mind the prospect of violence because I was allowed to be violent right back. I liked being a real security consultant. 

“It would have been safer if you’d stayed on station,” I noted. Mensah was too important to risk her life over petty smuggling so there must be something else going on.

“Yes, but…” Mensah seemed sheepish. “What if they found sentient aliens?”

“That’s unlikely.” Sentient life was a rare thing and humans had yet to find a living alien species able to converse with them. I had no idea why they were so obsessed with the idea. Most humans could barely stand interacting with me, a partly human construct, so how did they expect to get along with something wholly alien? A lot of media was based on the premise that such a meeting would go really badly and I was inclined to agree. 

It was far, far more likely the cargo was merely made up of creatures from a boring interdicted planet. Such animals had value to unscrupulous collectors and scientists because they were nearly impossible to get legally until the origin planet was re-opened, which could take forever. 

“I know it’s unlikely,” Mensah said, “but it would explain why they’re being so evasive.”

It was pleasant to see her excited about the possibility, remote though it was. I reminded her, “You can’t come in until we clear the ship. Safety protocol.”

“Your field camera will be enough for me. I won’t come near unless there’s something really unusual going on.”

“Like sentient aliens,” I said skeptically. 

“Like sentient aliens,” Mensah agreed. 

This ship was small but fast, with a competent bot pilot that smoothly coordinated with the border patrol ship to send me over. This way I could join the boarding team on the same shuttle. The team greeted me with small nods and nothing else, which was just how I liked it. 

“Prepare for launch,” the team leader said. There were no seats on this shuttle, to make it easier to enter and exit in a hurry, but plenty of handholds. I seized one. 

The data indicated that the interdicted ship had no detectable external weapons, unlike the border patrol ship, which was designed to be a visual deterrent to pirates and others. Still, the human team was braced for trouble, tense and alert. Personally, I figured that if a hidden railgun came out of that interdicted ship, there was nothing I could do about it, so I might as well watch some media while waiting to find out if we were going to die. 

Nothing fired at us, though, and we docked with no issues. The team leader, identifiable only by a fancy insignia on his suit, motioned me to take point. I couldn’t tell if it was respect for Doctor Mensah’s hireling or if he wanted a meat shield for his team. I didn’t mind either way. 

I had already reviewed all available information and it wasn’t much. A ship this size could carry up to a dozen crewmembers and passengers in comfort, but whoever had answered the border patrol hails insisted they were only three aboard due to unspecified accidents. The vague answer was suspicious, so I took over the ship’s system as soon as I could make contact, rushing to grab all available camera feeds. The bot pilot wasn’t very sophisticated and it was understandably alarmed to have me crash in like that. It calmed when I sent it my official ID and told it this was an inspection from appropriate authorities. It understood inspections and contraband searches well enough. 

Physically I was standing in an empty hallway, keeping an eye out while the rest of the team disembarked, but mentally I was sorting through the camera feed. I focused on recent footage from the mess, because humans needed to eat. Only three humans had gone there to eat meal pacs today. I tried to go back in time, to look for others, and realized a great deal of footage was missing from the feed. That wasn’t suspicious at all. 

I remained with the border patrol team until they secured the helm and arrested the human pilot—the bot was too primitive not to be supervised in deep space—then signaled the leader I would head over to check the cargo. That was, after all, what Mensah was interested in. 

The other two crewmembers I had already located via camera; I sent the footage to the team and left them to handle it. None of the crew looked like any sort of human security—meaning no fighting augments and no weapons—and they were highly unlikely to resist now that we had physical control. 

Mensah had full access to my helmet’s field camera, but I still took the time to tell her, _No resistance so far. I’m heading to the cargo bay now._

She tapped the feed as acknowledgement and let me get on with it. This was why I liked working with her. 

I planned to do an initial safety sweep first. The others could collect DNA samples after. Even interdicted planets had some public data made available, so we might be able to identify where these creatures had come from. Border patrol would check the logs, but I had a suspicion that like the cam footage, a lot might be missing. 

I had already seen what was waiting for me through the cameras, but I hadn’t expected the smell of life and its unfortunate byproducts to be quite so strong. It was unpleasant. Too many creatures were packed in, trapped in too-small cages. Or perhaps it wasn’t that the cages were small so much that the creatures were huge. Shaggy behemoths grunted at my passage and predators several times bigger than me watched with a little too much interest. I kept away from the bars and used the camera feed to watch my own back. Face to face with this dangerous fauna, I was beginning to have an idea what kind of incident might have happened on board this ship. They hadn’t exactly chosen small and cute creatures to carry. Maybe they hadn’t been able to find or catch smaller targets. 

Mensah would be disappointed. Nothing in here was wearing clothes or showing any other clear indicator of sentience. There were a few creatures with hand-like appendages that might be tool-users, and therefore possibly early sentients akin to Earth monkeys, but that would be something for scientists to look into, not a SecUnit. 

I pinged Mensah. _All creatures are caged, but some might be able to reach out. I don’t see anything likely to be people._

I was still looking at the camera feed, so I caught a flash of something. I reviewed it. There was a cage on the far side that looked empty except for a creature with its wings outstretched in some kind of warning or aggressive display. But I had just caught a glimpse of something peeking from behind those wide scaly wings, something that looked awfully like a flesh-colored face. 

Was there a human hiding in there?

I reviewed all available camera footage. 

Oh. 

Mensah might get what she hoped for after all. 

I walked up to the bars for a closer look. The winged creature twitched, a bunch of spine things rising around its head. It probably wasn’t a friendly gesture. It still had its wings outspread to hide its friend but the camera footage had shown me enough. 

Because I had been keeping an eye on the border agents’ progress both via the ship feed and via their own helmet feeds, I was aware they now had the three crewmembers in custody and had finished sweeping the living areas for any others. It was increasingly unlikely that anyone else was on board so I decided to take a small risk. I took off my helmet and the arm pieces of my armor to show some human skin. Then I stuck my left arm between the bars. 

“Hello. Do you understand me?” I didn’t expect them to, it was just something to say to show I was attempting communication. 

I was going to feel quite foolish if I had to explain to Mensah why my arm got ripped off, but it was worth a try. 

The creature eased forward, watching me intently. More specifically, it was watching my face, making eye contact. Most predators didn’t like it when prey looked at them. Eye contact was something that people did. Well, I thought so, anyway, based on all the hostile fauna I’d met. 

It grabbed my wrist, hard enough to say arm-ripping wasn’t out of the question, and studied my hand. This close, it was obvious ours hands were very similar, with five digits each. I had failed to notice this earlier because of all the scales and spines and things. 

“Can you understand me?” I asked again. 

It said something in answer but it was incomprehensible to my advanced translation module. 

“That’s a no then.”

I did what I usually do when in strange situations, and relied on my media knowledge. I used my free hand to pat my chest. “Murderbot,” I said. I touched the other person. “You?” I did it a few more times.

A human would have reacted when it suddenly shape-shifted, but I didn’t. The scales went away, and the spines, and the wings. A person eerily similar to a human stood before me, wearing ragged clothing. I had no idea where the clothing had come from, since it hadn’t been wearing it when it had scales, but that was a question for other people to work out.

He—probably a he, but asking wasn’t possible right now—touched me. “Mudder’ot.” Then it touched its own chest. “Moon.”

I pointed to my new friend. “Moon.” Then I pointed to the person who had been revealed when the wings vanished. “Moon?”

“Chime. Moon.”

I repeated. “Chime. Moon. Murderbot.”

Something suddenly went _clang_, followed by an alarm blaring. Mensah pinged me urgently through the feed. She seemed unaware of what I had been doing in the past few moments, probably because I had turned my helmet’s camera in the wrong direction when I removed it. 

Mensah did not quite yell in the feed, but almost. _Something got free! Be careful, it’s big!_

She didn’t tell me to get out, presumably because she knew me. She probably thought I was still wearing full armor though, not standing here with several pieces of it sitting on the floor. 

_Is it sabotage?_ I queried, trying to get my damn armor back on. 

_Unlikely. It became agitated on its own and burst out. Be careful._

Moon’s sharpening attention, and the faint sounds behind me, told me I might not like what I was about to see. I didn’t turn around or stop putting my armor back together, relying once more on the camera feed. There was a big, er, thing. A flightless bird, maybe. Its beak was huge and possibly strong enough to snap the bars on these cages. Maybe that was the clang I’d heard; I didn’t have time to review footage to find out. It was now standing at the corridor junction and watching me jam my helmet back on. 

Moon said something, soft and urgent.

I made a guess. “There’s a giant hostile behind me? Yeah, I know.”

It charged. Maybe it was hungry, maybe it was pissed off, maybe it was just scared and going for the ‘fight’ part of flee or fight. I wasn’t unsympathetic, it had had a bad several days since being kidnapped from its home, but I really didn’t want to get chewed up. Moon yelled, his friend yelled, I spun round and fired the small energy guns built into my arms. 

It was like firing at a moving mountain; it screeched as if insulted and kept coming. In seconds it had me pinned against the bars, its talons catching against the edge of my chest plate and threatening to rip it off. Moon reached out, fully scaly again, and grabbed its beak, trying to keep it away from my face. I appreciated the thought because I wasn’t sure my helmet could stand up to its strength; my chest plate was now missing and a line of fire ran down my abdomen. Other clawed hands reach out, slashing, and the bird thing abruptly realized it hadn’t made a wise move when I finally managed to unload a gun into its soft throat. It seized and collapsed on me. It was ridiculously heavy so I got squished to the floor and had to strain just to heave it off. 

Moon was patting me over through the bars and saying things that sounded alarmed. He was probably concerned about the blood. Everybody was always concerned about that. I didn’t like being touched, but I tolerated it because it was an attempt to help, even though I didn’t need it. I mean, sure, it would have been really bad if a normal human had had its belly slashed open by sharp talons, but to me it was just an inconvenience. My performance reliability was only down to 90%. Hardly a concern. 

Heavy footsteps heralded the belated arrival of backup. I wasn’t mad about it; if somebody had to be disemboweled, it was better it be me. There weren’t even any organs or intestines in there, as my belly was just a bit of flesh over artificial parts. 

Half the border agents trained their weapon on the dead hostile and the other half trained theirs on my new friends. I rose quickly to shield them. 

“Hostile is down,” I said. “Please point your weapons away from me.” I was allowed to say things like that now and I could even sound cranky about it. I really liked being a security consultant. 

At the same time, I pinged Mensah. _I need you in the cargo hold. And tell the border agents to go do something elsewhere; they’re nervous and it makes me nervous._

_I’m on my way. Are you okay?_

_I’m fine but I need to show you something. And please stay away from the cage bars as you come in._

I was already using my eyes and the camera feed to ensure I spotted no other damaged cage. I thought the odds of something else getting free were low enough to give my favorite human the very thing she had been hoping for. She wanted first contact? Here it was.

It took several minutes for Mensah to arrive and they were long, boring minutes because I hurt and I couldn’t afford to watch any media to take my mind off the pain, not when I had to make absolutely sure no danger awaited Mensah and no dumb agent tried to, say, shoot my new friends. I wasn’t bothered by their scales and claws—I had in-built guns, I was just as dangerous—but evidently the humans were.

Mensah was a bit out of breath as she came to a stop next to me. She glanced at my injuries, worried even though she knew my capabilities. 

“I’m fine,” I told her as I finished reaffixing my chest plate. It was shaky, but it would do.

The nice thing about Mensah is that she took me at my word. She didn’t make me explain that what would be worrying on a human was just a scratch on me and I really was fine. It hurt, sure, but it could wait. I permitted myself to dial down my pain receptors.

“Here, this is what I want to show you…” I took the recording of my interaction with Moon, filmed through the nearest ship camera, and dumped it into our private feed. She gasped twice while reviewing it. 

I turned to Moon, who’d be very still since the border agents had come, and did the presentations, touching everybody in turn. “Murderbot. Moon. Mensah.”

“Me’sa,” Moon repeated carefully, reaching out. I didn’t tense, but I was ready to intervene. I was confident I was fast enough, and besides I didn’t think there was any hostility here. 

“There’s…there’s protocols for meeting aliens,” Mensah said, looking dazed with glee. “We really should…” I had never seen her so close to speechless and it was oddly endearing. 

Moon shape-shifted. Mensah gasped once more, but not in alarm since she’d seen it on my recording. “Oh, oh, he’s trying to be friendly, isn’t he? We need those protocols, now! Let them out, we’ll go somewhere nicer.”

“Are you sure? They’re strong, maybe as strong as me.” 

“Is that a threat assessment?”

“They seem to want to communicate, but that could change. They haven’t been treated well by humans so far.”

To her credit, Mensah considered a moment longer before deciding. “It’s best to give trust if you want trust in return. Let them out.”

The cage had an actual lock and key, very old-fashioned but probably a good idea if you were afraid a system glitch might, say, slide all the electronic locks open and let a bunch of hungry fauna out. I didn’t have the key, but I had weapons. I won. 

Moon and Chime looked wary, but seemed willing to follow us. They stopped at some point to stare at a shaggy creature in a cage and Moon’s belly rumbled. 

“Food first, I think,” Mensah said. “I hope the mess has something they can eat, because butchering an animal is very messy.”

“I can kill it,” I said. That was about as far as I could go. I didn’t know how humans—or aliens—liked to cut up their meat. I supposed I could look it up, if it came to that. 

“We’ll try the mess first.”

Dried fruits were a hit, and some junk food, but most of the food pacs we tried seemed to leave them unimpressed. Moon prodded at a reconstituted hamburger with great suspicion. 

“I’ll go kill the thing,” I said, resigned. I’d meanwhile been looking at the bits of camera feed that were still available. It was clear these people had previously been fed raw meat and had eaten it with no reluctance whatsoever. 

I could probably have let them kill the animal themselves, those claws certainly weren’t for show, but I didn’t want to risk them getting hurt. I at least could stand away from the cage and shoot the animal to death. Which is what I did, aiming carefully to kill it quickly. I felt an odd little pang of guilt about killing something that hadn’t been trying to kill me or my humans. 

The hart part was cutting off a limb to carry back. I gave up on not tracking blood everywhere and directed the ship’s cleaning bots to come around and deal with it. 

Moon and Chime were gratifying happy to see the meat. Chime started tearing in with fangs and claws, but Moon hissed at him. They both glanced at us then tried to eat less messily. 

“They’re reacting to your horrified expression,” I told Mensah. She wouldn’t be judgmental on purpose, but she’d probably never had to kill and eat a real animal and I suppose it was gruesome to watch. I mean, I’d seen worse, and I wasn’t bothered, but it was a little gruesome nonetheless. 

“Right, right.” She arranged her face into neutrality. 

The meat disappeared awfully fast. Two pairs of hopeful eyes stared at me.

“I’ll get more,” I said.

I did. Then I got more. Then I got _more_. Thankfully by the time we were down to the last piece, Moon and Chime finally looked content. They still ate the last piece, but slowly. 

Mensah was trying not to show her anger, likely to avoid worrying our new guests, but I heard it loud and clear when she said, “They’ve been starving them!”

I started trying to calculate how many animals in the hold might be edible—predators often weren’t favored for food, for some reason—and how long that might last. Was there enough to bring them back to their home planet if they couldn’t deal with reconstituted meat?

Moon yawned and Chime didn’t look much more alert. Mensah had been staring at them the whole time, so she couldn’t have missed it. “Can you show them to passenger accommodations and keep watch for now? I need to talk to some experts and prepare a communication protocol.”

The problem didn’t occur to me until we were inside the room—passenger rooms were usually bigger than crew quarters and it was true here too—and Moon and Chime went poking about. Beds were self-explanatory, but the facilities weren’t. I didn’t have to void anything since I lacked a digestive system, but these two would eventually need to. 

_Doctor Mensah. Can somebody with appropriate body parts come and show them how to use the facilities?_

It took a long time to get a reply. _I’ve got no volunteers. They’re afraid and that would only make Moon and Chime uncomfortable. Can you try to mime it?_

Of all the things humans had ever asked of me, this was probably the most embarrassing. 

I did my best. 

The shower was a hit. They squeezed into it together—with humans that would indicate a romantic relationship, but I couldn’t assume that here—and didn’t come out for a long time. Water, or the fancy washing liquid that was nearly indistinguishably from water, was limited on ships, but some showers would allow you to recycle your grey water so you could shower for as long as you wanted. 

Chime came out with a wet cloth, and nothing else. I mean that he was naked in his human-like shape and holding a wet hand towel. He edged closer to me and pointed to the blood leaking from under my chest plate. Oh yeah, that. I’d kind of forgotten. That was why dialing down pain receptors wasn’t always the best idea. I’d lost a couple more percentage points in reliability performance.

I accepted the hand towel and grabbed a nearby first aid kit to clean and seal the wound. I’d need to get repaired at some point, but in the near future I mostly just needed to conceal the damage. Me walking around injured made humans uncomfortable and their reaction made me uncomfortable too.

Moon and Chime watched me curiously from the lower bunk bed, where they’d curled up together. They hadn’t had any trouble identifying the bed for what it was. They were both naked under the blanket, apparently because they’d tried to scrub their clothes in the shower and had left the items hung there. They seemed comfortable enough as they were but I’d definitely get them something fresh to wear when they got up. Sexual parts were weird and nothing I wanted to look at if I could help it. Well, at least I could tell Mensah that male pronouns were likely applicable to them, unless and until they could say otherwise.

_**“He must heal faster than we do,**”_ Chime said. _**“Look, it’s not even bleeding anymore.”**_

_ **“That’s good. I was worried they were like the Fell and didn’t care if one of their own died from injuries.”** _

I had no idea what they were saying, but I assumed Mensah would want the recording, so I tagged it for her. 

_How are they?_ Mensah replied a few moments later.

_Asleep now. They really liked the shower._

_Good. Please let me know when they wake. The other crewmembers are under watch so nobody should bother you. _

Moon and Chime hadn’t seemed to mind I was in the room—I didn’t know how else to interpret their casual nudity followed by their willingness to fall asleep in front of me—so I figured I’d use the available chair. I dimmed the lights to almost nothing and settled in to watch media while keeping an eye on all available feeds. 

Several comfortable hours went by. The only event of note was a slender, white-haired crewmember going out on his own, which was a little odd since Mensah had assured me they were all under watch, but he just peeked inside the cargo hold then went back to the crew quarter he’d come from. I dismissed it as probably nothing important and went back to my media.


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2

I spotted Mensah long before she arrived, so I was not taken by surprise when the door whooshed open next to me. That wasn’t the case for Moon, who jerked awake, went scaly, and fell off the bed.

“Sorry,” Mensah said, averting her eyes when a clearly flustered Moon went back to his human-like looks. His naked, human-like looks. “I brought breakfast.” By which she meant she had brought fresh fruits and pastries from the border patrol ship, since our guests had shown yesterday they would eat these things. 

_You could have offered them clothes,_ Mensah sent me reproachfully after she put the food down and left the room. _Or warned me not to come in._

_I don’t think modesty is important to them,_ I sent back sourly. 

_Interesting,_ Mensah replied, because of course she would find that more interesting than distressing. 

I didn’t blame Moon and Chime for my discomfort; they clearly weren’t trying to do nudity at me. They could also have interpreted me staying in the room as an indication there was no issue. In any case, I was neither equipped for nor interested in teaching aliens about human cultural norms regarding nudity. I’d rather get shot. Hopefully Mensah would do something about that (teaching them, I mean, not getting me shot).

“Here,” I said, pushing ship clothing at our guests before they could start eating. 

Moon and Chime seemed skeptical, pulling at the fabric with dubious faces, but once they realized their own clothes were still damp they made do. I was relieved they didn’t try to stay naked instead. I wasn’t that understanding.

_Mission clothing is a success,_ I told Mensah. _You can come in._

I mostly didn’t pay attention to Mensah’s work with Moon and Chime. I wasn’t really needed for this and I could always review the feed if my participation was suddenly solicited, like when Chime pushed food towards me. I presumed he did this because he noticed I was the only one not eating. Because I had no way to explain I lacked a digestive system, I tucked a fruit in a pocket as if for later. This seemed satisfactory.

At some point Mensah waved a hand in front of my face. I paused my show. “Yes, Doctor Mensah?”

“I think they’re asking to go outside, or at least somewhere big. Something to do with their wings. I tried to convey we’re off planet but I don’t think they really understand. Do you think it’d be okay to show them to a viewport? I don’t want them to think I’m refusing their request. There’s no room big enough for those wings except the hold and that’s currently full of occupied cages.”

I paused to consider what could possibly go wrong. “I’ll go, you stay here. In case they panic.” 

_**“I think they understood,”**_ Chime said excitedly as he followed me. _**“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really need to fly.”**_

The viewport was small, but adequate for the purpose. I gestured vaguely to it. “Outside bad,” I said. I tried to mime chocking on nothing, to rather mixed results.

_**“Are we underwater?”**_ Moon wondered, touching the viewport. 

_**“We’d be very deep,”**_ Chime replied. _**“Deeper than the underwater city with the fake Forerunner. The lights look like stars, but maybe it’s other houses like this one. I wonder how they move about. They’re not waterlings. No gills.”**_

_**“Maybe there are waterlings around though.”**_ Moon sighed, turning away. _**“I suppose that means we can’t go fly. How do they even leave here?”**_

They looked dispirited as we went back. I would have liked to tell them Mensah would see them home, but they wouldn’t understand. Not yet, anyway.

_Do we know where they’re from?_ I inquired in my private feed with Mensah.

_We have a general idea, but the logs are a mess. It’s like someone tried to wipe them but didn’t know how to do it properly. They’re working on retrieving and organizing the data. The border agents are trying to find out what happened to the other crewmembers. Unfortunately the camera feeds were purged and those we can’t retrieve._

Yes, I’d noticed the camera feed only went back a few days. Possibly the surviving crewmembers had murdered or abandoned the others and wiped data to hide it. Or the others had gotten eaten by the cargo and the survivors had wiped the logs out of panic, fear of liability, or something else. In any case, it wasn’t my problem.

Moon and Chime suddenly went still, taking deep breathes. 

_ **“You smell that?”** _

_ **“It’s faint, but yes.”** _

_ **“I thought it died. We haven’t smelled it in days.”** _

_ **“That’s not good. I don’t think these people know about Fell.”** _

“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking from one to the other.

“Me’sa,” Moon said grimly. 

“Sure. Let’s go see Doctor Mensah.”

_**“Shouldn’t we try to follow the scent?”**_ Chime said anxiously. 

_**“We have to learn to talk to them faster,”**_ Moon replied. _**“If we track down that Ruler and try to kill it without explaining, we’ll look bad, and we don’t know how to get home.”**_

_ **“They’ll understand when it shifts to fight us, though.”** _

_ **“Just the two of us against a shifted Ruler could go very badly, and if it doesn’t shift, then they might try to protect it. You saw the weapons they have.”** _

_ **“I’m so tired. I just want to go home.”** _

They were behind me, but because I was hooked into the cameras I saw Moon wrap an arm about Chime’s waist comfortingly. _**“I know. I wish Jade were here.”**_

I tagged this conversation too for Mensah. I’d be surprised if they didn’t have teams of people and A.I. working on every scrap we had so far, trying to decipher this unknown language. 

I delivered my charges then notified Mensah I would go in the hold and do a visual and manual check for weakening cage bars and such. I didn’t want more bird things to get out. As for the danger Moon and Chime might pose to Mensah, I was currently rating that as almost zero. They’d done nothing unreasonable so far and unless circumstances changed, I figured my job was more to protect them from humans than the other way round. I could watch all relevant feeds in real time, so if anybody unauthorized tried to get close, I’d be right back. It wasn’t a big ship and I could move very fast. 

It smelled like fresh blood in the cargo hold and the predators were agitated as I went by. I followed the smell to a shut cage with nothing but bones and bloodstains in it. I tried to review recent footage but got an error from all nearby cameras. This had happened while I was focused on Moon and Chime. The feeds I had tapped for real-time attention, such as the approach to the passenger cabins, weren’t in the hold and I regretted it now. I could only see that crewmembers had been allowed to go to the mess, under escort, to grab meal pacs. That had happened right before the mysterious error. 

I didn’t like it, but what could I possible tell Mensah? That I suspected somebody had messed with the feeds so they could chop up a random creature in secret? It made more sense to assume it was a genuine malfunction that had happened at the same time somebody intelligent had decided to chop up a prey animal to feed to the predators. Except, the predators didn’t look fed. They paced like the smell of blood reminded them how very hungry they were. 

_Doctor Mensah, has somebody fed the animals today? They seem restless._

_No, not yet. There’s been debate over whether it’s best to put them down now and preserve the meat for the trip back instead of trying to make Moon and Chime eat our kind of food. Some animals may not be edible, but they can tell us that. We’ve worked out ‘good food’ and ‘bad food.’_

So I was back to a deliberate action. A skilled hacker would recycle footage so that nothing looked amiss, not delete it or cause an error. So this was amateur work. The crewmembers were the first suspects, but they should have been under watch. Maybe they’d paid off a border agent or two? But to what end?

Clearly I was going to have to watch all available feeds in real time so I could catch any further interference as they happened. Watching that many would make it impossible to enjoy my shows at the same time. But nothing weird happened over the next couple hours; the feeds mostly showed a pair of cautious border agents pushing slabs of meat or huge bundle of greenery through cage bars. There was already a water distribution system in the cages. 

Mensah and our new friends—they identified themselves as Raksura, but whether that was a species, a country, or a planet was hard to tell—stayed up trying to communicate until Chime was literally falling asleep on Moon’s shoulder. 

“I think you all need sleep,” I said firmly. “Doctor Mensah, there’s another passenger room next door if you want to stay close.” While I was almost sure Mensah was in no danger, the feed error from earlier bothered me. 

“Good idea,” she said, yawning. “We can get back to work faster that way. Maybe when I wake up the experts will have new info for me…” She rose and gathered her data pads. “Good night, Moon, Chime.” She mimed sleeping. “Sleep now.”

“Sleep,” Chime echoed. “Good.”

Moon and Chime looked suddenly tense when Mensah stepped out. Why, because she was the only person who had been trying to talk to them? 

I opened the door to gesture down the hall. “She’s just going to the next room.”

Moon put his head out in the hallway in time to see Mensah go through the next door. He seemed to relax a little. “Me’sa sleep. Moon sleep. Mu’dderbot sleep?”

The last sounded like a question. I settled against the hallway wall. I would be perfectly fine out here and this way I could watch both doors without relying on feeds that could be tempered with. “No sleep,” I replied. I pointed to my eyes and down the hallway. I reviewed my own feed and realized they’d covered a word that either meant ‘eyes’ or ‘seeing’ or similar. I used that word. 

Moon looked…relieved? “Good. _**Seeing**_ good.” He went back inside and said to Chime, _**“I think he’s guarding us.”**_

_**“Guarding others against us, more like,”**_ Chime said thoughtfully. _**“But at least he has a chance against a Ruler. Me’sa doesn’t. If a Ruler tries to eat Mu’dderbot, it’ll be noisy.”**_

Nothing happened that night, other than I got enough quiet time to reset my tolerance for people interaction. Not needing sleep came in quite handy sometimes. 

The next day Moon and Chime requested food so we all went down to the cargo hold so they could show me what they wanted to eat. They stopped in front of the empty cage and made unhappy hissing sounds before moving on. I wished they could have told me what bothered them about it; did they think we had eaten whatever was in there? Did they not like to share? 

They settled on a weird creature with very thin fur and long legs meant for hoping. I killed it for them and we waited as they ate. 

Mensah winced a little but she was mostly busy talking to herself. “They’re built to hunt. They have the jaws and claws of apex predators. But they also really like fruits and bread, so that makes them omnivores. I can’t tell yet why they have two shapes or more importantly how… If only I could bring them to a lab.”

“Why can’t you?” I asked, curious.

“The medical facilities on these ships are too limited for actual lab work and I can’t ask or obtain their informed consent in any case,” Mensah said wistfully. “And I can’t wait until we’re able to obtain their consent either; that’ll take too long. We have to bring them back home as soon as we can. We’re trying to keep the news quiet, but it’s going to be big.”

“Do we know where to go yet?” 

“They’re making progress on data recovery. It shouldn’t be long now. The main question is how far is it and who are we sending there.”

On the off-chance that this information was sensitive, or that whoever had been playing with the cameras was watching and being more subtle than I credited them for, I switched to feed-talk. _We’re going aren’t we?_

_Quite possibly, if I can get away. _

_I’ll see if I can fit a trip in my busy schedule._

Mensah smiled, probably because she knew I had no new contract coming up and would have cancelled any such thing to work with her instead. It was a little scary to realize she had come to know me this well. 

When we came out of the cargo hold, Mensah stopped suddenly, with the far-away look of a human consulting her feed. “Somebody wants to talk to me in the helm. You three go back and I’ll catch up.”

The moment Moon and Chime realized Mensah was heading in a different direction, they spun on their barefoot heels—they hadn’t taken to the shoes we tried to give them—and went after her. I was happy to let them, because I wanted to stick close to her too. 

I warned Mensah, _We’re coming too. They want to stay with you. They seem very nervous about you since yesterday. Like you might go away._

Mensah paused to let us catch up and sent back, _Maybe they’re clinging to me as someone they think can help them. They’re in a tough situation._

The helm held two border agents working on consoles and a white-haired crewmember sitting in a chair touching nothing. The crewmember stared. Moon surged forward. 

I was faster than a human, but barely fast enough to grab Moon’s arm. I half-expected him to get violent with me, but he only hissed and gestured with his free arm. _**“That’s a Fell!**_ Bad! Eat you!” 

Mensah tried to talk to Moon, to explain this crewmember was helping now. 

Meanwhile, I watched the crewmember. He was nowhere as alarmed as he should be. In fact he seemed perfectly calm as he told Mensah, “His distress is understandable, but he’s dangerous. Please send him away before he hurts me.”

Mensah tugged Moon backward; he went, but he kept his body between her and the crewmember the entire time. That was oddly protective behavior against a tall, slim human who looked like he spent far more time on his personal grooming than anything else. I couldn’t spot any augments. Maybe this person was a sadist who’d done things to Moon and Chime in transit? Maybe that was why they’d deleted footage. Most court systems would look dimly upon kidnapping sentient aliens and brutalizing them. 

While Mensah was still trying to soothe Moon, I touched Chime’s arm. It seemed to be how they got each other’s attention.

“Bad human?” I asked, pointing behind us as we left the room. The crewmember watched us from the doorway, acting as if he had nothing to fear from scaly aliens strong enough to rip him apart. 

“Fell,” Chime said grimly. “Bad.”

“Bad Fell,” I repeated. Was Fell a race, a people, an insult? 

Chime looked a little heartened. “Yes! Fell eat Raksura. Fell eat _**groundlings**_.”

Mensah thought that ‘groundling’ was their word for us. It probably didn’t mean ‘human’ as such, it could mean ‘aliens’ or ‘outsiders’ but for now I assumed he meant human. Which made his words really disturbing. 

“Fell eat you? Eat people?”

“Yes. Eat Mensah.”

They were worried that crewmember was something called a Fell that ate people and that might want to eat Mensah. They could have been applying some odd superstition of their kind—the crewmember had had white hair, maybe Raksura were prejudiced against that—but I had to consider the possibility. After all, we still had no proof what had happened to the missing crew. I suppose a human might have dismissed the idea out of hand, but I was still wondering who had killed and disposed of that missing beast. 

I was going to watch the feeds very, very closely now. No more half-assed work. And I would not let Mensah go anywhere without me. Something was going on, and while it might not be cannibalism, it might still be old-fashioned murder. Part of me couldn't believe that slim crewmember was a danger—he'd sounded quite harmless—but his behavior was so unusual I couldn't let it go. 

Some decisions had been made somewhere, because the feeds showed border agents going through the hold, killing the beasts before bleeding and butchering them. They looked like they knew what they were doing. A couple predator corpses were carried out whole, probably for sneaky analysis. Oh, Mensah probably had an excellent official reason to hold back some samples, but the truth was probably more along the lines that the biologists on station were begging and she wanted to keep them happy. She was kind that way.

I spotted the suspicious crewmember once or twice, going to the mess and walking around with a proper escort, but he didn’t do anything interesting like kill and eat someone. He wouldn’t anyway; he must know about the feeds if he or someone helping him had sabotaged incriminating footage. 

He was also the only original crewmember left aboard here; the others had been moved to the patrol ship at some point and not returned. I’d seen the transfer, but not tagged the event as anything of interest. Now though I pinged the patrol ship AI for info and it helpfully confirmed they were being held in the brig because the third crewmember, the suspicious white-haired one, had said those two were responsible for the deaths of missing crew. Weirdly, the two accused seemed too confused to either confess or deny. They just didn’t remember. If I could have grabbed the brig feed I would have, but the patrol ship was too far away for that and besides I already had a headache from everything I was monitoring.

When I booted Mensah out to go get some sleep, Chime shoved paper in my hand. Mensah had gotten actual pens and paper and Chime had been drawing things for her. He’d apparently also been drawing things for me, because he showed me first a sketch of Moon’s non-scaly face alongside his scaly face, and then a sketch of our suspicious crew guy alongside a drawing of a different scaly face. 

“Moon,” Chime said, tapping the first page. The other he named, “Fell.”

I still couldn’t tell whether ‘Fell’ was an insult or a species and I didn’t care. If that guy really was a shapeshifter like the Raksura, one who’d somehow made himself a place on the crew, then he was more trouble than I’d anticipated. 

I wasn’t very good with facial expression, so I mimicked the hissing thing they did when they were unhappy. Or, well, that was what Mensah had put in her notes and I agreed. 

Chime pointed to the bed. “Mu’dderbot sleep,” he said. “We eye Fell.”

They’d apparently learned pronouns while I was obsessively monitoring feeds. That was nice. They still had no idea I wasn’t a normal-ish person though, if they wanted me to get some rest. 

After internally debating my options, I choose to lie in bed, my helmet off, and use my pretending-to-sleep-like-a-human program while watching the feeds very closely. Moon and Chime sat together in the hallway, taking guard position in the same spot I had.

_**“Do you think he believes us?”**_ Moon asked.

_**“Maybe,”**_ Chime replied. _**“At least the ruler didn’t get inside his head; he didn’t defend it or anything.”**_

_ **“I really want to go find it and rip its head off.”** _

_ **“If he’d shifted, we could have done that. But he clearly realized he shouldn’t. He probably won’t unless forced.”** _

_ **“I know. I hate smart Fell. I wonder how long it’ll be until some of these groundlings go missing.”** _

I had motion alerts set on every single camera feed but most everybody was sleeping, since it was middle of the night according to station time. I was sorely tempted to backburn the feeds and watch some media, but I resisted. Things had gotten too serious. I waited until I noticed Chime was beginning to nod off. Then I got up and went to relieve them. Thankfully they didn’t argue and went to bed. 

I was not happy to spot the suspicious crewmember come down the hallway alone, unguarded. I moved to block his path towards the cabins where Mensah and the others were sleeping. I didn’t call for help, because my threat assessment module believed I could handle him even if he proved abled to turn into a scaly person. 

He held up his hands. “Please, I just want to talk to Doctor Mensah. I have something important to tell her but I don’t want anyone else to overhear. Please help me.”

I hesitated. He sounded genuinely distressed and I had no concrete proof he was a bad person other than Moon and Chime’s say-so. Why should I believe them over him?

Mensah peeked out of her cabin, just feet behind me. “Is everything alright?”

“This person has something to tell you.” To the crewmember I said, “You can talk now.” I wasn’t going to get out of the way though. 

“Thank you.” He looked past me to Mensah. “I know you won’t believe me, but those people aren’t like you and I. Raksura appear to use their shapeshifting ability to prey on humans. They pretend to be your friend, then they shift and eat you. I think they ate the other crew. I’m not sure, because we can’t seem to remember properly. I think they did something to us so we’d forget. They’re using you to find a way off this ship to have access to more people to eat. We’re all in danger. Please, you must listen.”

“That’s terrible,” Mensah said. “I can’t believe Moon and Chime would do that.” But she sounded half-convinced already. I thought it was odd; she was usually more fact-oriented.

“But they were locked up,” I pointed out. “How’d they eat anybody from within a cage?”

“I think they locked themselves in to look like victims to you,” the crewmember said. “Do you really think they couldn’t break out if they really wanted to?” 

I didn’t know who to believe anymore. 

The crewmember stared down the hall. “Look, they’re considering attacking us right now. You should shoot them.”

My arm twitched but I didn’t raise my weapons. Moon and Chime were indeed watching us, looking worried. Catching my gaze, Chime raised his hands to cover his ears. _**“Don’t listen to him.”**_

They didn’t look like hostiles to me. I reviewed all my footage at high speed and couldn’t find any sign they were a danger. But I was also having trouble believing the crewmember was a danger. We’d need to keep everybody on lockdown until we could get some answers. 

“He’s right, we need to take precautions.” Mensah said, sounding sad. “Call for backup and put the Raksura under lock. If they resist…” 

“The Raksura have told me they think _he_ is the secret cannibal,” I said. “At this point if you lock one up, you have to lock them all up.”

“That’s not necessary, he’s no danger,” Mensah said. 

The crewmember watched us. “That’s right, I’m no danger.”

I really, really wanted to believe him. But I didn’t understand why. And that made me suspicious. 

I glanced back at Moon and Chime while internally reviewing the scene from the moment the crewmember had first addressed me. I’d thought he sounded genuine and persuasive, but on the recording he sounded flat, like he didn’t care about anything he was saying. There was never any expression on his face, unlike Moon and Chime who even now stared at me in evident worry as they whispered. 

_ **“He’s going to cave to the Fell.”** _

_ **“No, he’s fighting it.”** _

Moon took a step forward. “Me’sa? Mu’dderbot? Friends?” 

“They are not your friends,” the crewmember said. “You can’t trust them.”

“I’m sorry, we can’t trust you right now,” Mensah repeated. 

I was having a reaction to the words, but only if I listened to them with my organic ears. 

“Doctor Mensah,” I said firmly, “please go inside the cabin and stay there until I instruct you otherwise. This might get dangerous.”

One more reason I liked her; she didn’t argue when I got serious. She just said, “Be careful.” 

I waited for the door to be closed before I shot the control panel. This would prevent the door from being opened until I cut it open. I did not want Mensah to come back out here.

“What did you do?” the crewmember asked, faintly puzzled. 

“That’s what I want to know,” I replied, leveling my weapons at him. “Did you eat the other crew?”

“No, the Raksura ate them.” He was still completely, eerily calm. Humans did not behave this way. “Why do you not believe me, one of your own kind?” Humans also did not talk like that.

“I can tell you’re not human. What are you? A Raksura? Something else?”

“The others tell me you are not human either. You are…construct. We can be friends.”

I steeled myself against the irrational urge to repeat his words that we could be friends. We certainly couldn’t. Instead I said, “Turn around and go to the hold. You’ll stay in a cage until we figure out what you are and what you did.”

When he sprang at me, suddenly bigger and scalier, I was ready. I had thought Moon was fast, but this Fell was possibly even faster. I fell back while shooting, feeling the sting of claws across my belly as my weakened chest plate gave up even trying to do its job and spun away from me. I should really have repaired it properly. 

Mensah was yelling to be let out, but I ignored her. I was busy worrying my threat assessment was wrong and I was outmatched. The small energy weapons built into my arms were unable to penetrate the thick armor on this person, although they did leave burn marks. I would have liked to call on the border agents for backup, but I was afraid they would turn against me. Mensah had been scarily easy to influence and I’d almost fallen for it too.

Chime yanked me backward, away from the flash of claws, and Moon bounced forward in my place, spines help high. Chime joined him and they attacked in concert, covering each other. It was novel to have competent fighters for backup, but their cautiousness told me they believed themselves outmatched. That was not good. 

I reached for the bigger weapon strapped against my leg armor. It wasn’t wise to use something this big inside a ship—it was meant for emergencies like massive shootouts fights with reckless and overly armed pirates—but I was growing short of options. My performance reliability was holding up at 85% but my threat assessment module did not like my chances if this hostile chose to target my head instead of my non-existent bowels.

_Doctor Mensah, put on the emergency suit in your cabin. Do it now. Then tell everybody else on board to do the same and be prepared to evacuate. _

_What’s happening? Who are you fighting?_

I had revoked her access to my helmet camera when I locked her up, but now I restored it to show her the fight in front of me. _It appears this person is something called a Fell. He attempted to disembowel me. Moon and Chime did not like that._

_But he’s a friend. _

_Is he?_ I looked down at my brand new wounds so she would see them too. Still not life-threatening, still not pleasant. 

After what felt like an eternity, but was objectively only a few seconds, Mensah replied, _I don’t know why I said that. He didn’t even give us his name and he just attacked you. I’ll let you handle it and get in the suit._

Intense relief washed over me. I hadn’t realized how concerned I was that Mensah would remain convinced this was her friend and decide to view me as an enemy. But she seemed to have reverted to her usual level-headed self.

I dodged Chime, who had been kicked with such force he flew backward, and stepped up into the space beside Moon, aiming my big weapon. 

“Surrender or I will shoot to kill,” I warned. I normally wouldn’t have bothered, but I knew Mensah would have wanted me to make the offer. “We will not harm you, but neither will we allow you to hurt others.” It was a line from some show or other. It sounded appropriate.

“You should shoot the Raksura,” the Fell suggested. “He’s very dangerous.” In the same breath he sprang at me. 

Though I was as careful as I could be with such a nimble target, there may have been a few blaring alerts after that, the kind that meant some moron was shooting through ship walls with inappropriately heavy weaponry and ship integrity was compromised. 

“Prepare for a breach,” the ship broadcasted, almost reproachfully. “Locate the nearest emergency locker and suit up. Prepare for a breach.”

Whoops. I made a move to pick Moon up—he was favoring a leg—but somehow he moved faster and picked me up instead. That was…new. 

“Cabin,” I said, pointing. “Go!” We piled in and I felt immediately better to have a solid, well-sealed door between us and the potential breach. 

There were two bunks and therefore two suits stashed in the emergency locker. I checked Moon and Chime over first, because bleeding to death in an emergency suit was no improvement. Only Moon’s leg bled enough to be an immediate concern but synthetic skin wasn’t going to adhere properly to scales. 

“Do the changing,” I told Moon, indicating his leg and the first aid kit I held. 

_Use the word **groundling**,_ Mensah advised me. I did so, but Moon kept trying to wave me away. 

“Good,” Moon assured me, patting his own leg. He pointed at the mess that was my abdomen. “Bad.”

_He has a point,_ Mensah said. _You look worse. Demonstrate on yourself what you plan to do, it’ll help. _

_You’re just trying to make me take care of myself,_ I accused her. 

She responded with a text signifier that meant she was laughing at me. 

I pointedly applied disinfectant, numbing spray, and skin-seal spray to myself. “Now you, Moon. _**Groundling.”**_

If Moon had been human I would have thought he was in shock and unable to realize his leg wound was concerning, but I was beginning to suspect his tolerance to injury was closer to mine than a human’s. I was usually the one assuring everybody I was fine and did not need immediate aid. It was irritating to be on the other end. 

_**“Just do it,”**_ Chime snapped. _**“We have no supplies so use his.”**_

Moon finally submitted with a sigh. 

_Everybody else evacuated,_ Mensah sent. _There’s only us to go._

I would have told her to go ahead, but I was the one who’d ensured she couldn’t leave the cabin on her own. 

Getting the emergency suits on Moon and Chime took work, but they seemed to understand the non-stop alarm was not a good sign and it was best to comply. 

I got to Mensah by the expedited process of burning through the wall between the two cabins. This way she could hand me the second suit from her cabin. I could survive a little vacuum exposure if I had to and my armor could usually function as a suit, but said armor was currently missing a huge piece and it placated humans when I took full precautions. 

Then I shepherded the three of them to safety, with a brief pause to recover the Fell remains since Mensah insisted. The animals had already been converted into food so there was nothing else to grab as we abandoned ship. I didn’t know what would happen to the wreck and I didn’t care.

Later, as I sat getting repaired in the border patrol ship med bay and watching my performance reliability move steadily upward, Mensah looked upon the Fell’s now-bagged remains. “I don’t understand how he could make us believe him so easily. Is it mind control? Pheromones? And how did he get so fluent so fast?” 

I offered no answer, because I’m not a scientist and I don’t really care about how. I had a different question. “What was he trying to accomplish?”

“The data we put back together seems to indicate they had already turned around,” Mensah said. “I believe this Fell was making the smugglers take him back home. He must have thought we stood in the way of that.”

“Maybe he realized Chime and Moon would let us know he’d been snacking on humans and we were likely to object.” I had never liked fictional cannibals and I liked real ones even less.

Mensah sighed. “Well, we’ll get him home all the same. Maybe his people will want him back for rites. I’m just sorry it ended this way.”

As far as I was concerned, I had protected everybody who deserved it so the mission was an unqualified success. The rest was going to be a leisurely trek back to the Raksura planet, with very little for me to do. Good thing I had downloaded new media recently. 

“You have several more cycles to learn things,” I said to cheer up Mensah. “Chime is lurking in the hallway waiting for you.” I knew this because, as always, I was hooked in every ship system I could reach. The border ship didn’t mind; it knew I was authorized security. 

Mensah smiled. “I’ll get back to work then. Join us when you’re ready.”

“Okay.” In the meantime, I had media to check out.


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3

Preservation did not have what anyone would call a proper defense fleet but they did own a number of armed ships. They primarily used these as border patrol vessels, rotating the ships so that they were never all in use at once. Despite this availability, it took some work on Mensah’s part to get authorization to take one of the off-duty vessels out of the system to carry the Raksura home.

I was glad Mensah had fought for it. This was not a matter to entrust to the unknown crew of a rented ship, and certainly not a matter to entrust to a security company like the one I had once belonged to. Sure, the Company would have delivered us all to Moon and Chime’s home world if we’d hired them to do it, but certainly not without finding a way to collect their DNA for dubious purposes. The existence (and treatment thereof) of half-human constructs was unfortunate enough. I did not want to hear of combat bots with Raksura DNA added in. 

So far the trip was wonderfully dull. I spent my days hanging around while Mensah and Jun, an expert in linguistic and anthropology, worked with Chime and Moon to expand the translation dictionary. I had no concerns about Jun; he was a mousy little human and no danger to anyone, least of all someone with hidden claws. 

I did keep an eye (or a camera) on any interaction with the ship crew, since they were unknown quantities, but so far they had remained professional. They were wary of me and the Raksura both, but they were definitively more afraid of what Doctor Mensah could do to them and their career if they caused difficulties during what had turned into a touchy political mission. It was novel not to be the most feared person around. 

Pin-Lee has remained on Preservation, acting as head solicitor on what seemed to have devolved into a multi-system legal argument over whether Moon and Chime should be ‘allowed’ to go home and ‘contaminate’ their society with knowledge of people beyond the sky. Mensah wasn’t having any of it, which was why we were speeding off towards the Raksura’s home world while the solicitors put up a fight. 

As part of that legal fight, Pin-Lee had asked me to put together some ‘non-threatening’ clips of the Raksura that might eventually be released to the public. So I couldn’t put in the good bits with the Fell and instead sent such thrilling scenes as ‘aliens eating breakfast pastries’ and ‘alien allowing Doctor Mensah to examine his wings.’ It seemed to make Pin-Lee happy. 

Out of nowhere, Mensah sent, _I want to tell them. They know enough words to follow the concept and they know I’ve been evasive about where we are and how we’re getting them home._

I replied, _I thought Pin-Lee’s legal argument was based on the fact it doesn’t matter if we sent them home since they don’t understand they’re off-planet anyway._

_As if they wouldn’t work it out when we put them down! Our landers aren’t invisible!_

_So we’re not going to sedate them as it was suggested?_

I was only saying it to needle her because I’d heard her yell about what a dangerous, irresponsible, and brainless idea that was. Yes, let’s drug them and dump them somewhere and hope they’re near their home and not about to be eaten by fauna or hostile species like the Fell! 

Mensah’s answer was a curt, _Don’t you start._

_Okay,_ I replied, _so go ahead and tell them._

_I need to make sure the cameras don’t catch it. Can you do that?_

_It’s rather paranoid of you, on your own ship._

_It’s to protect them. I wouldn’t want anything leaked._

_Just let me know when to start covering. _

_Is now good? Jun is going on break. _

_Sure. I’m going to come over, sit down, and suddenly we’ll look like we’re playing cards again._

Two minutes later I was seated next to Mensah and giving her the go ahead. Recycled video and a musical track made it look like we were giving another try to the game Moon had taught us to play with hand-made cards. 

Mensah took a moment to find a good opening. “Chime, you remember when I asked what shape the world was, and you said it was round?”

I remembered that bit pretty well because Chime had replied tentatively, like he was worried Mensah didn’t realize worlds were round and might be upset by his answer.

Chime sat up, reacting to Mensah’s unusually grim tone. “Yes?”

Mensah started drawing quickly, sketching a planetary system. “There are many round worlds in the sky. You come from one. We come from another. You asked where we are. Well, we’re in the deep sky between worlds.” 

“So this is a sky ship?”

“A deep-sky ship, yes.”

There was a little more back and forth before Mensah said, “You’re not surprised?”

“There’s people everywhere,” Chime said, “under the sea or in the sky.”

The apparent diversity of sentient species on the Raksura world was just one more thing Mensah was dying to confirm. 

Moon finally weighted in. “That’s it? That’s the secret? You’re not from the Three Worlds?”

“Some other people are worried knowing this would harm your society.”

“How?” Chime said, bemused. 

“I don’t really know,” Mensah said. “But we disagree with those people and we’re trying to reach your home before they’re done arguing about it.”

“Can we get there before any of them catch up in another sky ship?” 

“We’re trying. My friend is stalling them with many arguments.”

“Groundling politics,” Chime said, like it made sense to him now. 

“So we pretend we don’t know,” Moon said. 

“Please so," Mensah said.

“How many cycles?”

“A few more, I think.”

When they arrived they’d need to confirm they had the right planet before anything else, but that was more details than Moon and Chime really needed.

“Jun is coming,” I warned. By the time Jun did arrive, the ‘card game’ had ended. Now resettled in what had become my watching corner, I got some media started. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Jun said, “about the Fell problem. Earlier you said the head of rulers have to be buried so they don’t attract other Fell. So we don’t have to find the Fell to return the body we have, we can just leave it somewhere obvious when we drop you off and the others will come get it, right?” 

I paused my media with a sinking feeling. Mensah and Moon had already had a near-argument about Mensah’s interest in trying to ‘return’ the dead Fell to his people. From Moon’s explanations, the Fell were like a species of psychopaths. You could explain all you wanted that eating other people wasn’t nice but they really didn’t care about their food’s opinion. I’d reminded Mensah that on a planet without any feed at all, it would be quite impossible to find a specific group of people for whom we had no name or address, even besides the fact they might try to _eat_ us if we succeeded. And here was this guy starting up the whole argument again. I was going to move him from the ‘harmless’ category into the ‘brainless’ category. 

I could see Moon’s expression darkening with similar thoughts, so I decided to save him the trouble of struggling with our language. “You want to draw cannibals to Moon and Chime’s homeland, so they can attack them?” 

Jun paused. “They wouldn’t necessarily attack anyone, would they?”

“Did you miss the ‘cannibal’ part? Or the part where Moon’s birth village was entirely destroyed by these people?” Moon hadn’t told us a whole lot about it, just enough to make his point that raiding other people was the Fell’s way of life. I had consumed enough media to have some idea how badly humans could treat each other during fighting, and that was without cannibals involved. “Did somebody bribe you to think of some way to get Moon and Chime killed?” 

Jun looked horrified by the accusation, which I expected would make him back down in a hurry. I wasn’t good with people, but I had learned a couple tricks. 

“That’s enough, please.” Mensah sighed. “I won’t do anything to put anyone in danger. I will however have the ship keep an eye out when we arrive, in case we do spot an opportunity to safely return the remains to someone. The lander can broadcast on speaker so we don’t have to get close and we won’t listen to anything they say in return.”

I subsided, not entirely satisfied but willing to let it go for now. Moon similarly said nothing. 

Chime reached for his pen and paper. “The Fell are the biggest danger to us, but I better show you a Ghobin and a Water Traveller. Do not try to talk to them. They also like to eat groundlings….”

*

I had a private cabin for this trip, which was unnecessary but still nice. Also it prevented Moon and Chime from trying to make me get some rest. I didn’t peculiarly want to explain that I didn’t have that kind of needs. It was easier to let them assume I slept when I wasn’t there. I was still watching, though. I was always watching. In a doing-my-job way, not a creepy way.

I usually returned to the Raksura’s cabin as soon as I noticed them waking. Today I stepped out of my cabin, started towards their door, then hastily stepped back. Oh, I wasn’t going to walk in on that. I waited awkwardly in the corridor instead.

When Mensah arrived, I stopped her. “They’re busy right now.”

“Showering?”

“No. Privately busy.” I made a face.

“Oh! Well, good. I’m glad they’re feeling safe. Is this the first ti—No, don’t answer that. That’s none of my business. Did the privacy feature kick in?”

Unlike my old company, which was quite happy to record absolutely everything its clients did, Preservation only used camera feeds for important things (like, say, documenting human-alien first contact) and additionally used a privacy feature that was supposed to auto-censor nudity. It came in very handy with the Raksura. 

“It’s working,” I said shortly. “I’ll know they’re done when the feed gets uncensored.” 

We waited awkwardly together. 

“We’re almost there,” Mensah said, more to make conversation than to give me any new information. I had been paying at least that much attention. “The planet seems to match parts of the map Chime drew for us. We’ll drop some drones to confirm, see if we can find Raksura or fauna similar to what we’ve seen.”

“Any news from Pin-Lee?” 

“Nothing new, no.” Mensah seemed happy about it, probably working from the theory that no news was good news. “We should be able to drop them off in peace.”

*

“Remember when you said we should be able to drop them off in peace?” I said gloomily as alarms blared.

“You’re not helping,” Mensah replied tightly. “Don’t talk if you have nothing useful to add.”

We were all strapped in, even me, because something had fired at our lander when we entered the atmosphere and we were now trailing smoke and going down. Mensah still had enough steering to keep us aimed for an open grassy plain, but it was going to be a rough landing. 

There had only been one shot fired, and I had already forwarded all the data to the ship above, so there wasn’t anything else I could do at this point except hope we survived the landing. We couldn’t even expect timely aid, because the ship only had this one lander and I very much doubted it was going to take off again. 

It was a very upsetting situation, so it was just as well that it wouldn’t last long. We had a few minutes to go.

Moon tapped my arm. “Out now?” he asked, pointing to the emergency door.

“Our odds are better in the crash couches than with the parachutes,” Mensah answered, still wrestling with the controls. 

“We can fly,” Moon said patiently. “We’ll carry you.”

Mensah was always one for quick decisions, which was good because we had an estimated three minutes before impact. The lander helped her decide even faster by making a sudden and ominous tearing metal sound. She yelled “We’re abandoning ship!” at the comm and “Go, go!” at the rest of us. 

Three of us took off our seatbelts by ripping them off. Moon pushed Mensah to Chime and joined me by the emergency door, wrapping a solid arm around my waist. Neither Raksura was in winged shape yet, probably because it would be harder to get out the door otherwise. 

“Watch out, we’ll be pulled out hard,” Mensah warned. Her arms were wrapped around Chime’s neck and he held her aloof easily. 

“We know,” Moon said, tense but not panicked. I had to wonder how often Raksura got into this kind of situations, because even level headed humans were rarely this calm. “They go first,” Moon told me.

“Agreed,” I said.

I forced the door open with one hand, using the other to anchor myself. Moon was also anchoring himself with his spare hand; between the two of us we were able to hold position by the door and wait for Chime and Mensah to exit. 

Once they had cleared the doorway I released my hold and hoped for the best. 

I felt Moon’s shape ripple as he changed, but he didn’t open his wings right away. I would have been anxious about it, except I understood he was waiting for us to get spun further away from the sputtering lander. Chime, a little below us, opened his wings suddenly. Moon followed suit. Air resistance made it feel like we were being yanked up, our speed slowing considerably. 

Moon grunted and shifted his hold on me. He’d already known I was unusually heavy from the other time he’d carried me and I suspected that was why he’d opted to send Mensah, who was lighter, with Chime.

I was grateful when we made landfall. It’s not that I didn’t trust them not to drop us, it’s just that I really, really didn’t like being that helpless and dependent on somebody else. Not having wings had never felt like a weakness before.

Mensah had staggered a few steps away and was now staring at the distant fire raging where the lander had hit. “I don’t think we’ll be able to salvage anything from there.”

“I have this,” I offered, showing her the pack of emergency supplies I had grabbed on the way out. It had been conveniently placed right next to the exit. 

It wasn’t much, but it would contain heat blankets, basic medical supplies, tablets to make water safe, and a brand of ration bars that, according to humans, were so vile only the truly starving would ever agree to eat them. I half-suspected they were meant to taste vile so that idiot humans didn’t use the emergency supplies as convenient snacks. 

“Good, thank you.” 

Mensah didn’t mention the Fell remains, which had also been on board the lander. The crash didn’t make me happy, but at least there could be no more talk of trying to return the remains to anyone. 

Mensah looked up at the sky as if trying to spot the orbiting ship, but daylight made that impossible. “They should drop a relay soon so we can keep in contact. Then I suppose we wait for somebody else with a lander to arrive.”

I had started scanning even before my feet touched ground. I saw nothing of interest, but I didn’t like how open this place was. The grass was tall, but unless we crawled it wouldn’t provide sufficient cover. A drone could spot us from very far away. 

“Is it safe to move to the forest?” I asked. I wanted to hide from whoever had shot at us, but local fauna was no joke either. 

Moon and Chime looked up from their own private conversation. I had it on feed if I wanted to review it, but they’d been talking so low and quick that I hadn’t really understood any of it. 

“Safer than here,” Moon said, reaching for me. I would have preferred to walk, but flying was faster. 

When they set us down again, it was on some sort of platform in a tree, like an observation post. Except that, on further examination, it seemed natural. There were several of these platform things, apparently made of nothing but tree and plants and moss. We were close enough to the forest edge to look out onto the plain, but deep enough inside that I thought we should be reasonably concealed as long as we didn’t light a fire. 

Moon jumped off without warning, disappearing in a flash. Chime, meanwhile, sat down and sighed. “I want tea,” he lamented. We had already established that what we called tea was repulsive to them even though the concept (plant-based material in hot water) was the same. 

“I want coffee,” Mensah said with a similar sigh. 

There was a noisy commotion not far off and Moon flew back holding something big, fuzzy, and dead. He dropped it on the edge of the platform and looked at us dubiously. “We can cook it.”

“No thank you,” Mensah said hastily. 

“We’ll be fine,” I said, handing Mensah a ration bar. “Enjoy your meal.” Mensah gave me a look, but she chewed on her ration bar resignedly. 

Clearly, fresh meat was very welcome to the Raksura. Mensah alternated between watching them pensively—behold the Raksura in their natural habitat!—and wincing away when they tore something off. 

I mostly watched everything else, using all my scanning and visual abilities. If I spotted something suspicious, I could just ask if we should worry about it. There was a frog-like thing climbing the tree trunk, but it was paying us no attention and had no feature I associated with hostile fauna, like teeth and claws. I still watched to ensure it was moving away. 

“There’s the relay,” I said as I caught the edge of a transmission. “They’re calling us.”

We let them know we were unharmed and safe. The ship had apparently lost us once we entered the forest, which was a welcome confirmation that this was sufficient cover.

The Raksura were napping after their meal when I caught movement. “Something big coming this way,” I said in alarm. 

Moon and Chime rolled to their feet, suddenly scaly. 

A creature with huge wings crash-landed between us and Moon and Chime, essentially taking up all the space left. I grabbed Mensah and jumped away while Moon and Chime yelled. I could deploy my arm weapons but they likely couldn’t hurt that thing and I had stupidly forgotten my large projectile weapon aboard the crashed lander. Good job, Murderbot, now everybody is going to get eaten. 

It took me half a second to translate what the Raksura were yelling. It seemed mostly to be “No!” and “Friends, they’re friends!” Moon dove in front of us, shielding us.

The giant thing vanished, replaced by a person. He looked at Moon incredulously. “Didn’t they kidnap you?”

“No, that was other groundlings,” Moon said. “We like these ones.”

“Ah,” the newcomer said. “Sorry.” Then he clocked Moon in the head. “Stop getting kidnapped!”

The sudden violence made me tense and Mensah suck in a breath, but Moon just rolled his eyes like slaps to the head were perfectly normal expressions of affection. Maybe they were, by alien standards. 

“Wasn’t on purpose,” Moon complained. 

I tentatively moved us back onto the platform, but I kept hold of Mensah. Chime came forward. “This is Stone, an older Raksura. We grow big with age.” The way he said it implied he understood we might find it hard to believe he was the same species as that guy. 

“I hope he’s not implying he and Moon are juveniles,” Mensah whispered, apparently aghast at the idea. 

“They can’t be,” I reminded her. “Moon said he had kids.” He hadn’t spoken much about his family and Mensah hadn’t pushed because it seemed to make him feel depressed.

“Ah, right.” Mensah separated herself from me and spoke Raksura. “Hello. I’m Mensah and this is Murderbot. We brought Moon and Chime back.”

Further explanations were given, eventually bringing Stone up to date to today, where we had tried to land and got shot at by what we suspected had to be more smugglers. It turned out that us getting shot had been so noisy and flashy that the other Raksura, who had been keeping an eye on the sky ever since sky-people had taken Moon and Chime away, had noticed at once. Hence why Stone had found us so quickly. 

“I don’t know if the ones who shot at us are the same as the ones who kidnapped us,” Moon said. “I don’t know why any of them would stay behind.”

“To gather more catches,” Chime suggested darkly. “They could have other people in cages.”

“My people will take care of them once reinforcements arrive,” Mensah promised. “They’ve already narrowed down their position.”

Stone bent towards Mensah. “Where are they? We need to go before they can move.”

“Incoming,” I said. This time, I identified them as Raksura easily enough; they looked just like Moon and Chime, though the colors varied. 

Moon and Chime disappeared from view, mobbed by everybody at once. I gave up trying to understand anything anyone was saying, as the translation module couldn’t keep up. In any case, most of it appeared to boil down to “You’re alive!” It was vaguely uncomfortable to watch so I pretended to be keeping a lookout for danger. Though I couldn’t imagine what kind of dumb fauna would attack us. Seeing Raksura in their natural habitat made it very clear they were dominant predators. I was less concerned about my lack of weapon now. 

The new Raksura, upon being told there were other suspected smugglers out there, also wanted to go after them immediately. Nothing Mensah said—about the danger, about letting humans clean up their own messes—could change their mind. 

“You could help me out here,” Mensah said in my direction. “Where’s your threat assessment?”

“My threat assessment is that the smugglers are going to take one look at the big one and pee their suits,” I said. “I have no problem with this.” It sounded very satisfying to me, maybe as satisfying as a solid ending to a good serial. 

“What if they have a SecUnit?”

“Are smugglers usually that rich?” Smugglers wouldn’t be dumb enough to rent a company unit, surely? A rented unit would record everything and send it back to the company, which would be extremely displeased to be associated with interdiction-flouting criminals. And the cost of buying a SecUnit outright was beyond most people’s means. Well, Mensah had done it, but she would have used government funds. It occurred to me that I’d never inquired about the details. How much had they paid for me, anyway?

I was so sidetracked by that question that I almost missed Mensah’s answer. “All sort of things end up on the black market, including older SecUnit models. And I’m not sure how they would have survived on a planet like this if they didn’t have some sort of heavy duty security.”

“Point taken.” They might have a secure habitat, but you couldn’t very well hunt and catch giant predators without going outside. So how had they gotten that done? “Did Moon and Chime ever say how they were caught?” 

“It didn’t occur to me to ask.” She turned to them. “Moon, do you recall how you were caught? Were they people like me? Or did they have people like Murderbot?”

The answer took a little while to work out, because neither “paralytic” nor “blowdart” had been put into the vocabulary yet. It appeared that Moon and Chime had been flying recon, looking into reports of strange groundlings being seen in the area, when they were shot down by darts that left them conscious but too paralyzed to even shift. Then people had come and carried them away to be locked in cages. 

“They set up some sort of automatic turret that shot at everything moving,” Mensah concluded. “Once they found a paralytic that worked on local fauna chemistry they could come collect even very dangerous fauna without too much danger, lock them up and retreat to their habitat.”

“Nobody we saw up close smelled like Mu’derbot, but some we only saw in suits,” Chime said. 

“Probably no SecUnit,” I said.

“I want confirmation of that,” Mensah said firmly. Nonetheless, she grudgingly asked the ship for directions to the location the shot had come from. 

“Get Chime and Moon home,” the one called Jade said. “Stone and I will go see about these groundlings.”

“I’m not going home without you,” Moon said. 

We waited out the argument, but I was unsurprised that, in the end, everybody was going. We set out like a war party, half a dozen winged Raksura with two guests. I would have liked to leave Mensah somewhere safe, but at present the safest place on this planet was probably between me and a couple Raksura. I wouldn’t have let Mensah alone with the new Raksura because I knew too little about them, but I was confident Moon and Chime saw Mensah as being under their protection. As long as we had them with us, I was reasonably comfortable. I was a little less comfortable with the idea that Moon and Chime also seemed to consider _me_ under their protection, but I could live with it. 

The Raksura spread out as we approached, in case our target had moved, but the ship above hadn’t seen anything indicating that. 

“That rocky hill over there,” Mensah said. “That’s where they tracked the missile from. They haven’t seen any vehicle leaving, though there’s just enough cover to hide people on foot.”

The smugglers had chosen their site with a minimum of intelligence. The hill was just far enough from the forest to prevent large fauna from sneaking up on them and the rock was thick enough to provide extra protection against attack—or detection from above. If they hadn’t been dumb enough to shoot at our lander, they would have gone unnoticed. It wasn’t like they could do anything about the ship above, so why give away their position? Maybe somebody had panicked. Humans did that. 

There was indeed an armored habitat crammed in a cave mouth that looked like it had been enlarged with the helpful application of explosives. The only parts that stuck out were weapons, like the ground-to-air turret that had served to shoot us down, and at least one other heavy-duty gun that I had seen used before as defense against actively hostile and aggressive fauna. Nearby blood splatter, old and dry, suggested they had had to use it. I wasn’t worried about it because I was too small and too fast to be hit by something like that. 

“That habitat is sized for about half a dozen people,” I said, “and it’s too small to have cages inside. Maybe there are cages in another cave, though. It might be smarter, to avoid attracting more predators who want to snack on the caged creatures.”

“The weapons need to be taken out,” Moon said. 

Stone, who was in his giant shape, rumbled. This appeared to mean something, because Jade responded, “Yes, you handle that. I’ll go straight to the door and rip it open.”

“I go in first,” I said. There was a ripple among the Raksura, like I’d said something appalling. “I have armor,” I pointed out. “And guns.” I deployed the guns in my arms because these new Raksura had never seen them. Small energy weapons like these couldn’t do much against something as big and armored as Stone, but would be plenty against regular humans. The size of this habitat made it unlikely there would be anything like a SecUnit around. And even if there were, I could handle it. 

“I go first,” Jade insisted.

I looked at Moon. “You remember when I shot the Fell?”

Moon glanced at Jade, probably thinking about the ruined remains of the Fell I’d shot with my big gun. “Let him go first.”

I was slightly more likely to survive that kind of firepower because so much of my body was designed to be replaced or regrown. Fully biological people didn’t fare as well when blown half to bits. 

I looked at Chime. “Can you stay with Mensah?”

“Do it,” Moon said immediately. “Keep watch here.”

That settled, we moved in. 

Stone barreled in ahead of us, smashing into the weapon turrets to disable them. Jade, a beat behind, grabbed at the door handle and yanked. The door swung open so easily she staggered back into Moon.

“That should have been locked,” I said. Everybody stared at the opening suspiciously.

I eased in front and peeked inside. There was no light, no sign of life. “Either they evacuated or it’s a trap.” I walked in to find out, guns deployed. I picked up no comm chatter, no feed other than a very basic habitat feed that indicated everything was in order—except for a warning about an open door—and offered a pitiful selection of media for its residents’ entertainment. Habitats usually came with security cameras but the only one here was pointing outside from right above the front door. 

The whole habitat constituted of two rooms with bunks and attached sanitary facilities, a tiny eating area, and a common room with a single human facedown on a table. At first I thought it was a corpse, but a second later I detected life signs. I poked him experimentally and he let out a snore. 

“Is he drunk?” Moon spoke from behind. “There’s nobody else in here. Have they run away?”

I stood there and reviewed that single camera’s memory. It only went back a few days before overwriting itself, but it was enough. “There’s a second person who left not long before we arrived. That’s all. They’re alone.” This didn’t exclude the possibility of another base elsewhere, but it felt unlikely. 

Moon picked up one of the handful of purple flowers scattered on the table. “These grow on trees inside the Reaches, not out here.”

“Do they have intoxicating properties?”

“Not to us,” Moon said, eying the insensate human. “What now?”

“Mensah will talk to him.” She was less likely to terrify him than the rest of us were. Plus, I didn’t want to talk to some dumb smuggler. I was beginning to chafe for some quiet time. I was also glad we hadn’t destroyed the door; with it locked and me watching the camera, this place would be safe enough for Mensah to wait out rescue. I liked Moon and Chime, but from what they’d explained, they lived in a giant tree. I had some doubts about how safe and comfortable that would be for a human.

I let Mensah handle the smuggler after quickly checking him over for weapons. Moon stayed inside the common room with Mensah, affecting his human looks, and the rest of us stood back in the hallway, eavesdropping. 

“Hello?” Mensah said. “Are you alright?”

“Huh? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Who’re you?”

“I’m Mensah. And you are?”

“I’m Jose.”

“Why are you all alone? Did you get left behind?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah.” The man quickly warmed up to the subject. “See, Lavi found some actual aliens in the forest and she told the boss and the boss got mad and told her shut her mouth but she wouldn’t stop talking about how she was going to win awards for discovering real aliens. He told me to shoot her, but I like Lavi so I didn’t. So he cut the comm and they left without us. Probably told the others we got eaten like Max did. Dumb Max, looking into dark holes for fun… But he died quick and I’m still here waiting to die so maybe he’s not so dumb.” The smuggler began to sniffle. “I want to go home. Lavi doesn’t care if we die here, she loves her alien friends, but I want to go home.”

“You’ll go home,” Mensah said encouragingly. “I promise.”

“You’re very nice for a hallucination,” the smuggler sniffled. “Nicer than Lavi.”

“Who shot at the lander? You or Lavi?”

“That was Lavi. I said we should steal the lander but she said Boss would kill us rather than let us back onboard the ship so it was no use. So she shot them down for revenge instead.”

_They thought our lander was the other smugglers coming back,_ Mensah sent me privately. _Makes sense?_

_From two stranded smugglers who aren’t the smartest? Sure. Anybody smart would have tried to shoot at nothing, to get our attention in case we were people who could rescue them. _

_It doesn’t sound like this Lavi wants to be rescued._

“Where’s Lavi now?” Mensah asked Jose.

“Forest,” Jose grunted. “She spends most days with her little stick people. She comes back here to sleep and wash. She’s going native now, eating all sorts of things. She brought me mushrooms. They taste okay and they make you high too. The hallucinations are a bit weird, though. No offence.”

Next to me, Chime stirred. “Can he draw the aliens in the forest? Or describe them more?”

I relayed the question to Mensah via our shared feed to avoid distracting Jose, who had yet to notice us. 

“You know, stick people,” Jose said. “Look like you put a bunch of twigs together. All bones, no flesh. They wear leaves for clothes.”

“Kek,” Chime whispered. “She met Kek. They’re friendly.”

“Do you know how we can find Levi?” Mensah asked. 

“She’ll show up sometime tonight. She always does.”

“Okay. Thank you Jose. Maybe you should go to bed.”

“Maybe… Goodbye, hallucination. Nice talking to you.” He slumped back onto the table and shortly resumed snoring. 

Mensah joined us in the hallway. “We should wait for this Levi to come home, then lock her and Jose in one of the bunk rooms. We’ll wait for pick up and bring them with.”

Moon, meanwhile, appeared to be translating for his friends who had not spent a couple weeks learning our language. 

“Disappointing,” Jade said. “I wanted to tear someone apart for hurting you two but…” She gestured vaguely towards Jose, as if to say he wasn’t worth it. 

“They will be punished for kidnapping Moon and Chime,” Mensah said. “And we will not let anyone else come here. This is your planet.”

Stone grunted. He’d had to go back to his human looks to fit inside the habitat. “It’s over. Let’s go home.”

We walked the Raksura outside, for no reason other than Mensah’s reluctance to see them leave. 

“You’ll be fine here?” Moon inquired. “You could come stay with us.” His offer was sincere, but I could tell he mostly just wanted to hurry home and be done with us. My feelings were rather similar. I liked him, sure, but I was ready to be alone with my media for a while and not have to worry about other people. Well, other than Mensah. 

“We’ll be fine, thank you,” I said awkwardly. “Try not to get kidnapped anymore.”

Mensah suddenly tilted her head, clearly listening to something from above. “Rescue has arrived in the system. Somebody aboard that new ship wants to know where Moon and Chime are, but our ship told them they’ve left for home already and we can’t track them.” She looked up as if she could see the ship approaching the planet then sighed. “I’m sorry to say this, but don’t be seen in this area for a while. They know what you look like but they won’t be able to find you if you don’t come back to the habitat and make yourself evident.”

“We have any reason to come this way,” Moon said with a careless shrug. “After this one, I’m not travelling anywhere for a while.”

“Goodbye,” Chime said. “It was interesting meeting you.”

“Farewell,” Mensah echoed. “I enjoyed talking with you both.”

“The Court of Indigo Cloud thanks you for your help,” Jade said, polite but stiff and clearly eager to be on her way, with a possessive hand on Moon’s wrist. The translation module only understood her because Chime had mentioned the court name before. 

I raised a hand in farewell, like humans did in shows. It was slightly less awkward than finding words. And just like that, the Raksura flew away. 

“I already miss them,” Mensah said wistfully as we returned to the habitat. “But this is for the best. They deserve to be left in peace. Now, to wait for Lavi…”

The arrival of a new ship to rescue us made Mensah more uneasy than happy because it meant we had been very close to being intercepted en route. Me, I was just glad the Raksura were out of danger and we could hope to lift off real soon. 

Lavi, when she did turn up, was easily captured. She had no weapons other than a handgun and a wooden spear and a very loud voice. “No!” Lavi screamed as I took her weapons away. “I won’t go back! I like it here! There’s no debt and no jail and you can just hunt your food! You can’t make me!”

Unfortunately for her, I could indeed make her. I dumped her on a bunk next to the still snoring Jose. I felt a little sorry about it, but leaving her here would not be a kindness in the long run. She was a squishy human and this was not a squishy-friendly planet. I knew too well what hostile fauna ended up doing to squishy humans. 

“Call for pick-up,” I told Mensah. “Let’s go home.”

-end-


End file.
